This invention relates to wireless telephones, and has particular relation to wireless telephones which may be used in multiple modes, such as audio, video, Internet, and the like.
It is expected of a wireless telephone only that it will have a keypad, a microphone, and an earpiece or other speaker. In this respect, it is like a wireline telephone. If video or Internet capabilities are to be added on to a wireline telephone, the add-on nature of these capabilities is apparent. No one expects a conventional wireline telephone to have video or Internet capabilities. These capabilities are instead provided by a personal computer (PC). The only significant connection between the PC and the telephone is that they share the same telephone line.
Miniaturization has proceeded more quickly in wireless telephones than in wireline telephones because light weight and low power consumption are so much more important. It has thus become possible, at least in semi-portable telephones, for a wireless telephone to have video and Internet capabilities. What has not yet been possible is for these capabilities to be designed in a user-friendly configuration.